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Our War with Mexico

While we try to bring peace and democracy a world awayinIraq and Afghanistan, while we attempt to rein in the drug trade and rid their governments of corruption, we fail to recognize the Great War we are having with Mexico. To the extent that we notice any hostilities at all it is over immigration and the perception that we are being invaded by not Mexico but by Mexicans. This misidentifies the real war.

In some ways the illegal immigrants are classic war refugees fleeing a corrupt and dangerous nation while seeking both political and economic freedom. We fail to recognize that we are part of the war going on in Mexico that is driving this exodus across our borders. There are no walls high enough or thick enough to keep people from seeking a better place or to keep drugs out.

While there are many things we can do to reduce illegal immigration, the most effective strategy is to cease our war with Mexico and help it to become a better place. It will be difficult but is both easier and more pressing than our utterly futile activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Warnings from our State Department tell us Mexico is a dangerous place; it is just short of being labeled a “failed state.” Its government is corrupt at every level. Its police penetrated and compromised by gangsters, its resources controlled by the wealthy and its court system willing to give a good result for those who can pay.

Now all this corruption is not terribly new but the level of violence is. Gang warfare kills thousands every year. Warring drug lords decapitate the soldiers of other cartels with abandon.

First it was at their northern border regions–at Tijuana and Juarez. Now it is all through Chihuahua, the Yucatan, Mexico City, Sonora, Sinaloa and aptly named Guerrero. Just this week 12 federal police were killed in Michoacn. Just yesterday a pitched gun battle killed 14 in the tourist Mecca of Taxco, where only last week the bodies of over 70 executed gang soldiers were found thrown down a mineshaft. What changed mere corruption into a bloody war? Well, we did.

Each year we in the United States send from 19 to 29 billion dollars to Mexico to buy drugs. This is a pot of money that people find worth fighting over. We created the demand for drugs. Then we declared war on drugs. The drug industry fought back. But they didn’t fight back with knives, pistols and machetes. They bought guns–automatic weapons, grenades, and armor-piercing ammunition. How did they pay for these advanced weapon systems? Easily. They used a small part of their great profits from selling us drugs to buy from us the weapons for their war.

We demand the drugs–first marijuana and then heroin. We buy the drugs sending billions into Mexico, creating chaos and destabilizing the government. The drug cartels fight to control their supply routes with our guns. This makes this our war. We are the oxygen that sets this combustible brew of evil corruption and violence aflame. The flames, of course, spread into our land, into our cities, involve our gangs and kill our innocent.

There are no easy fixes, but we can start by understanding our part in this tragic equation. We create the demand. We buy the drugs. We sell the arms. We are a part of the problem that is destroying Mexico and degrading our own society.
2010 Jonathan Dobrerwww.Dobrer.com

As usual, a thoughtful and incisive analysis by one of the best political commentators here. But Jon, you failed to carry the piece to it’s logical conclusion: a forceful statement that we must legalize drugs, particularly marijuana, if we are ever to stop the source of this madness. Californians will have an opportunity – the best to date – to do exactly that in November. The war on drugs is an even more dismal failure than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s time to end it.